Scalpel

Chaos, stillness, timeless.
Myth, gravity, fragility.
Incisive, piercing, lingering. 

Eyes
that cut through
the suspense of the moment,
bear
the weight of the words,
unravel
the magic of life itself.

Hamstrung

I saw
cannons firing in the sky.
I watched the spectacle with my father.
There was one that landed too close.
We tried to run for our dear lives,
but we froze in time.
The whirlpool above us
sucked us inside.
A string snapped,
the dream vanished.   
 
Our reality
is a reductionist tale
of the insecurities of the gods.
Millions of them
walk in and out of our dreams
trampling the canvas,
setting off a mindless stampede.
We survive
because of our myopia.
We open our eyes
and we forget everything.
Anyone with the mental capacity
to think beyond
or to remember more than they should
either goes insane,
kills himself,
or becomes a philosopher. 

The perfume she wears on Sundays

Time--
gnawing bits of her scarce joys,
chipping away at her appetite for light and hope,
scraping her element,
peeling her essence, layer by layer,
eroding her zest for life.
 
On really bad days, time
plunders, butchers,
forces itself on her,
gets away clean,
until what is left of her
is a mere shadow.
 
Sometimes,
I stand at a street corner
to take in a whiff
of that special perfume she wears on Sundays,
or to catch a glimpse of her wearied smile
that still warms my heart.
 
Sometimes,
I wait there,
with roses in my hand,
roses of the deepest red, I told the florist.
 
My knees tremble,
my throat runs dry,
as I struggle to summon the courage
to reclaim the grown-up girl
I still call my first love.

Skin Deep

Silhouettes, shadows,
extreme close-ups, tears,
reflections, reflections on tears,
starlit skies, cool breeze
under the starlit skies,
the flight of migratory birds
under the starlit skies,
laughter, unfiltered laughter,
unfiltered light,
skin.
Unfiltered light on skin.
Sweat on skin.
Chocolate on skin.
Specks, flecks, freckles on skin.
Gloss on skin. Lipstick. Love bites.  
The curves, the folds, the pores.
The stretch marks.
The goosebumps
around the areola.
Ice on skin.
Lube on skin.
Menthol.
Thrills under the skin,
thrills on the skin,
titillating,
cold thrills, cheap thrills, chills.
The moans, the smacks,
the hush, the whispers.
Youth. Transgressions.
A life lived.
Blink of an eye.

Fallen Wings

She stares at the blue flame
while cutting lettuce and carrots,
fine chopping the greens and oranges,
mindless of the whirring, humming, buzzing,
and other numbing noises
which fill the frozen space-time
in her little kitchen.  
 
He hasn’t lied,
at least to her knowledge,
but his presence around her
is piercingly suffocating.
He hasn’t been unfaithful,
but for some minor breaches
that involved some one-night stands,
no strings attached,
no emotions involved,
no serious commitments.
He’s not capable of one.
 
Her own heartbeat
in the silence of the night
is louder than his snoring,
her muffled screams
in the shower
are louder than the roar of a passing airplane above,
her welled-up tears
in the middle of a busy marketplace
are louder than the boisterous bargains.
 
She always felt
the man of the house
has a weird sense of humor.
‘Whatever she is,
she became
because I allowed it,’
he remarked to his best friend
at the dinner table,
and guffawed.
 
She always felt
the man of the house
has a misplaced sense of romance.
Every time they become intimate,
things seem more distant.
He starts a timer
and writes an entry in a logbook.
He jibes:
his act of fucking
is the art of fucking.

She always felt
the man of the house
has no sense of acknowledgement.
He takes her for granted:
her space,
her time,
her consent.
He loves to see her naked,
her fears exposed
and dignity bared.
 
Sometimes she stares out of a train window
or into an impenetrable void for too long
and escapes into her internal landscape,
a personal portal,
filled with swatches of neon colors
and a montage of shots from the past,
Neither sad nor ecstatic.
It’s a smooth escape
from the drudgery
and the dreadful monotony.  
Inside the sanctuary
she frantically searches everywhere
for her fallen wings.

Nothing truly belongs

Our lives
have been lived before,
our dreams
have been dreamt before,
our drama
has been played a thousand times
in packed theatres,
our stories are not unique,
our pain, our tears, our suffering
have been stomached and forgotten,
our shames have been exposed,
our vulgarities despised,
our love, our passions, our joys
shall soon be reduced to distant memories.
Like the previous generations,
we too shall pass on the baton.
 
The brightest candles
will be blown by the wind,
the loudest philosophies 
will not make sense anymore,
neither the quietest moments,
like a ripple on a lake,
like a quiet shadow,
like a season’s passing.
The cave paintings will fade,
the greatest palaces and temples 
will turn to dust and rubble,
cities will disappear,
hordes of prophets 
and pantheons of gods- 
even the mightiest, 
will be falsified, 
civilizations will be buried,
mountains will fold,
and land will become sea. 

In an abandoned playground,
a broken swing sways gently
to the whims of the twilight breeze.
In the grand scheme of things,
in the nonchalant silence of the cosmos,
the universe minds its own business.

Flame Tree

It’s the dog days of summer,
the foliage is on fire.
The ground below 
is carnage, 
a bloody battlefield.

Patterns

I love
my milk with cookies
and the splatter of rain
on fiery red hatchbacks.
I love
patterns - routines, rituals.
Most of all,
I love the unfolding of patterns.
 
I patiently wait
at street corners, bus-stops,
metro stations, playgrounds,
streetside cafes,
abandoned constructions.
From my vantage point,
patterns appear out of the noise.
 
I pick my favorite color
from the spectrum.
I pick my favorite tune
from the chaos.
I pick my starling
from the murmuration,
my sardine from the great shoal.
 
For months,
I patiently wait
beneath the murmur,
inside the shoal,
among the noise—
to pick my next victim.  

She fell in love
with the boy next door.
She fell in love with his mischief,
how his laughter
sounded like the anklets
tied to a galloping calf,
how he smelled
like the mud on a riverbank,
how his smile
held the innocence
and eagerness of a mother bird
opening her eyes to the first rays of the sun,
how the grip of his hand on her waist
unfolded the wildest desires.
 
They ran after each other,
played and loved passionately,
on the sands,
in orchards,
in ruined castles
and the secret passages underneath.  
 
She was unaware
of his origin story,
his greatness, and his miracles.
He preferred to keep it that way.
He doesn't want her to love him any other way,
or to worship him like a god.
He wanted her to love him like the boy next door.
He was her mischievous boy next door.
 
One summer evening,
resting on a low branch,
he played the flute
as she playfully etched her name
on the sole of his right toe thumb
with a peacock feather.
As the feather's touch
tickled his skin,
he flinched
and jerked his toe away,
reminding her of a deer flicking its ears.

For the gods,
the music was otherworldly,
the essence of the primordial
which weaved into every aspect of creation,
like a soothing echo
of the afterglow.

For him,
the music was an escape.
It’s an expression of the divine
carrying the weight of humanity,
bearing the burden of being human,
the pain of attachment, love,
and the loss of love.

For her ears,
the artistry and wizardry were muted.
The music was the chuckle of flirtation
which flowed through
the undergrowth and the canopy,
bathing every bud, leaf, and bark--
to usher the birds and beasts
from their hollows and burrows. 

Engrossed in the trance
of such enchanting music,
she told herself
she can't love him any other way,
not as a beloved,
not as a wife,
not as a partner.   
She’s his eternal lover,
the inseparable part of his soul
till the end of time.
In this life, she knew
she would disappear like the morning mist.
A discreet tear
trickled down her tender cheek. 

A hundred years passed,
and a thousand tragic stories. 
In the unfolding age of doom,
the grandiosity of the music
was muted.   
Wearied and resigned,
he laid on the forest floor,
on a bed of dried leaves.
While in a dreamlike state,
he felt a feather tip
on his bare sole.
He twitched his big toe.
A hunter on the prowl
took the fatal shot
thinking he had seen a deer flick its ear,
As the arrow
took away his final breath,
he smiled thinking
of the fragrance of her body,
the sweet nothings
whispered into his ears,
her delicate love bites,
how her passion melted into his.
A discreet teardrop
trickled down 
his leathered, wrinkled cheek
when he thought
of the sweetness of her name:
Radha.

Devi

The worlds
tremble to his tandava.
His thundering feet
dance on a cosmic battlefield
strewn with beheaded torsos,
crumbled stars, and deflated egos,
an ocean
churning with fire and blood.
 
Out there in the middle,
born out of such chaos,
raised
by the gods of the apocalypse,
she emerges
and dominates,
riding the king of beasts.
He closes his eyes
in silent submission.
Like a thousand lashes of lightning
flashing against a boiling grey sky,
her dark, shining complexion,
contrasts
his ash-smeared body.
Her bloodshot fierce eyes
radiate wild splendor.
Her heavy bosom
heaves to a primal rhythm
as warm blood
slithers down her serpentine tongue.
The beast
swallows
the sun, the moon,
and the constellations.
 
As she tames the chaos,
as the music fades in her mind’s sanctuary,
as she swallows the darkness
and the darkest forces,
she transforms
into the final embodiment of tranquility—
the eye of the storm.
 
She closes her eyes.
He opens his third eye.

The Sky People

They don’t pull the strings anymore.
They don’t perform those miracles anymore.
They are not amused anymore
as we continue to cling feverishly
to our mortal shells.
 
They say
they’re all around us:
in every dust mote,
in every grain of pollen,
in every drift of sand,
in every devastating cyclone
or the most silent whisper,
in every act of kindness
or the loudest whiplash.
 
They say
they gloated at their creation–
the grand spectacle beneath their feet.
 
For millennia,
every prince and pauper,
every man and child,
every wailing mother
who lost her dear one
to the cruel twist of fate,
and every woman
who never had the chance to be,
looked at the skies
for a bead of sweat
or a glimpse of hope.
 
For millennia,
we had questions–
about life, and its purpose,
about hatred, plague, suffering, mortality,
about death, silence–
your silence, your inaction.
But these, and countless more,
were never answered.  
 
We languished. We perished.
Impaled. Trampled. Run over.
On riverbeds. On battlefields.  
In a lover’s lap.
In the warmth of a mother’s bosom.
From flesh, lust, and bone,
to rot, rust, and dust.
Like the fate of an anthill in a cornfield,
you mow us down–
our spark…our sting…our spirit,
to prepare the ground for the next crop.

Is higher consciousness
so utterly cold, unfeeling
and incomprehensible?
Each of you
with no face, no soul, no passion,
no ticking, no kicking, no tingling.

Is our existence on earth
a mirror of such soullessness
that you so despise to peep at?
Are you too scared
to witness such horrendous ugliness--
a product of your own wily schemes and devices?

The Desert People

Beyond the badlands
is a sea of white and gold.
A shard of the sun
melts into the mirage,
the cloudless sky
silenced for too long.
The eastern winds,
deafening guttural whistles
from the thorny acacias,
flow into the unforgiving landscape.

A lone traveler 
is drawn
to the sands of the wilderness,
to the radiating heat,
to the glitter
of the stretching miles,
to the tiring nothingness
which refuses to yield.
Like a drug,
like a death wish,
the desert sucks him inward
and consumes his soul.

In the evening hours,
the bedouins
dismount the humped beasts
and gather around the crackling fire.
A mute old man
points at the bejeweled night sky,
makes grand gestures with his dancing fingers
to perform for his wide-eyed grandson
the story of a giant bull
which gored a hunter in a thousand-day battle,
and stranger tales
about dwarf-like, honey-eyed creatures,
custodians of the bones of time,
dreamcatchers
who live, love, and ‘let-be’
in a labyrinth of tunnels
beneath the sands.
 
At bedtime,
the boy peeps out his tent,
and feels the space
between the sky and the sands
close in gently.
He stands on the edge of the dunes,
spreadeagle,
and basks
in the majesty of the moment.

To Swallow a Whale

To read Nietzsche’s overpowering arguments
under the towering trees of a forest,
to ponder
being and non-being
under the starlit night.

To recite Bukowski
in the pink haze of a smoke-filled room,
as he bares our dirty desires,
our filthy excesses,
and other vulgarities of life.
 
To witness Frida’s tropical flourish
in a seaside town
as she toys with animalistic symbols,
inner conflict, defiance,
and the lost art of introspection.
 
To be awed by Zimmer’s magnificence
in the trenches of life’s battles,
to transcend
the utter powerlessness of existence
and the dread of infinity.
 
To peek at Giger’s otherworldly demons
in the dingy slums of an apocalyptic world,
to witness the crumbling of faith
and the slow demise
of the old gods and new.  
 
To stare deeply into the void of the heart,
the palpable nothingness stares back at you,
to live one day at a time,
to lose a thread of yourself
one day at a time.

To stare deeply at whatever remains --
a dark unswallowable lump
more fluid than Van Gogh,
more dense than Joyce,
more unsettling than Munch,
more absurd than Duchamp,
more rebellious than Banksy.

Sita

Born of the shudders of the earth,
she's the plough that tills the soil,
the green blades of abundance,
and the silent labour
of the wriggling worms
and the marching millipedes.

She's the wick,
the dance of a flame,
the tongues of an engulfing fire
which consume forests whole,
and its ashen grounds
from where new life awakens.
 
She's the vessel--
the water inside,
she's the million waves
which kiss every beach,
she's the wild of the sea
and the calm of the deep.
 
She's the howling wind,
the tinkle of the chimes,
the carefree spirit
of an unleashed kite,
she's the soaring wings,
and dreamy romances.
 
She's the spin and the scent
of a potter's wheel,
the rumbling rage of the planet,
its voracious appetite that swallows
every king, every army,
every hubris, every past.
 
She's the being,
the vast nothingness,
the before, the after,
the now, and the sweet hereafter,
every fleeting moment,
and time itself.

Animal

Chapter: The Worship

We don’t dress up for the men.
We dress up for those scanning eyes,
the envious looks we get from other girls.
Most men don’t give a fuck.
Their intentions are primal,
their approach, medieval. 
But my man’s different.

He cares about every minute detail,
every color of every thread of a fabric
that’s a mismatch,
every strand of hair
that’s out of place.
He kisses my forehead,
paints my nails,
sucks my toes.
He mulls over
every crease on my dress,
every crevice on my body.
When it matters,
where it matters,
he takes his time.

He’s my baby, my darling.

Chapter: The Wreck

I smell my man from miles away.  

I see his silhouette against the roaring sea,
I see his outline through the translucent curtains,
I see him naked through the cracks of my mirror.  

My raging bull
paints the town bloody red,
splashes my canvas
with glaring yellows and looming grays,
at times, mystical and deep
like the giant trees of a forest,
but mostly shallow
like a puny puddle.
 
He whispers sweet nothings
in the silence of the night,
he screams in excruciating pain
at the horrors of the eclipse,
jumps off roofs,
sprints across orchards,
dances under the lightning,
wails under the neon,
wallows in his own half-baked philosophies,
laughs loudest at his own filthy jokes.
 
I taste his thrills,
I taste his wounds,
I taste his flesh and salt. 

He starts fights, starts fires,
taints spirits, shatters glasses,
plays dirty, talks dirty
punches mean, punches hard,
explores me, exploits me,
moves like an animal, 
fucks like an animal,
lies through his teeth,
hides behind failing masks,
worships me like a goddess,
shatters me like an asteroid,
takes me on wild rides
in the steely rain,
rolling on the asphalt –
triggering my pleasure and pain,
consumes me whole,
strips me, eviscerates me,
and vomits my pulp –
decimating my identity.  

I smell his highs, his high notes,
I smell his sweaty fears,
I smell his fading shadows.
I smell my man from miles away.

Tat tvam asi

When a star moves around a galaxy
it carries with it
the planets, the moons,
the comets, the stardust,
the trespassing assassins,
the mountains, the music,
the storms, the wildfires,
the thunderous skies, the embers,
the stories, the legends,
a trillion possibilities,
and a whisper of the glittering magic.
 
Every speck of dust,
every photon of light,
every snowflake,
every philandering particle,
here, there, and everywhere at once,
every silence, every scream,
every ought, every naught,
everything that is,
everything that is not,
reaffirm
in the ever-expanding wilderness –
'I am that!'

Primal - The Fireworks

Over millennia,
the wild waters of the river
have carved their path
through the rusty landscape.
The winds howl endlessly
in the majestic halls of the canyon.
The grinding plates
beneath the surface
murmur the tales
of old earth, of a lost civilization,
of a glacier calving into the sea.

Hidden
in the gorges of the great river
is a cavern,
a virginial space,
a temple of atonement
for the geological transgressions.
Enveloped in a mystic blue haze,
unkissed by the sun, untouched by breeze,
unbothered by the operatic magnificence in the valleys, 
the shrine echoes the sound of dripping water, 
the tapping, an ode to poetic stillness. 

At the other end of the theatre
it’s the monsoon downpour.
Fireworks burst in the sky.

It's been five years.
She thought it was unrequited,
he thought it was platonic,
until this moment.
They are stuck in the evening rush hour.
Ten minutes ago
he put his hand on her thigh.
She froze,
he didn't flinch.
She knows it’s not casual,
he doesn't explain,
There's absolute silence in the car.
She hasn't moved
in what feels like eternity.
Glittering pixels of red light
dance on splattered drops
crawling down the windshield.
She doesn’t turn on the wiper.
The dissolving landscapes on the glass
and the fluidity of the moment
remind her of Monet’s waterlilies.
His grip tightens,
the mercury rises.
She suddenly comes to her senses,
startled by the cacophony
of thunder, expletives, blaring horns,
and the drumbeat of raindrops
on the metal roof.
 
Hidden
in the gorges of her wild spirit,
restraint unravels
in the grip of an all-consuming suspense.

Primal - The Hunt

The forepaw
lands softly on the wet ground.
The crackle
echoes through hushed corners.
Her ears twitch,
the muscles in her legs tighten.
The monkeys holler like wailing widows,
a thousand wings take flight.
The crickets, like awed spectators, hush each other,
a lone scorpion
scurries into the decaying mulch.
 
The teeth sink deeper
into her pulsing throat.
Warm blood gushes
and splatters
over the striped coat.
Her bright eyes
hold the frozen wonder
of a starlit night.
 
The bleating is silenced
in the bellows and hollows
of a ravenous,
all-consuming hunger.

Primal – Longing

Every atom
of her existence
hits me like cocaine dust.

I wait
with bated breath
for the return
of summer birds,
for a glimpse
of her shadow
in the warm ocean breeze,
for the answer
veiled behind her quiet hayā.
 
Sometimes,
I wait for her
in the marketplace,
oblivious
to haggles and cackles,
and even to the scent
of ripe mangoes and pineapples.

When I’m alone,
just me and my thoughts,
I would savour her,
one fantasy at a time.
When greed takes over,
the overwhelming rush
drives me to the edge—
to swallow her whole.
 
The mind wanders
like a restless spirit,
like a stealthy big cat
in deep forest cover
eager to pounce hungrily
on the object
of the most intense,
all-consuming desire.

a mouthful of sky

it doesn’t matter anymore
i listen to him
and it doesn’t matter
if his stories are real
i listen to him keenly
wide-eyed
tightly grasping his hand
like i want to kiss him madly
between those empty words
and stolen moments
on a crowded beach

sometimes
basking in the stillness
of a sunday morning
or sailing through the scary stillness
of a saturday evening
i tell stories to myself
it doesn’t matter anymore
if the stories are real
if my stories are real

the day we found each other

I look at you, you look at me,
a gaze and charm
that holds the immense weight
of the suspense of the moment.

Your lips graze against mine,
your desire presses against mine,
your teeth sink into my shoulders—
I wince.

My tongue explores 
the warmth of your mouth.
I reveal to you, 
you reveal to me.
We strip the layers one by one:
our scars, our demons,
our impulses, our fears,
our blunders, our shame,
our ugliness—
all laid bare.

The evening sun
shines on random objects in the room,
a beige lampshade painted with sunflowers,
a strand of burgundy-dyed hair stuck in a pearl earring, 
a crumpled tissue smudged with lipstick—
the same bloodred hue
as the bite on my shoulder—
a lone origami swan
perched on the bedside table,
beads of sweat twinkling on moving skin,
and the hushed silence
of stripped clothes on the floor. 

The Wilds

The universe expands
and wraps into itself.
From this self-love,
new worlds emerge:
some barren,
some virginal,
some indulgent,
some magical, vibrant, and possessed
like Tolkein's forbidden forests,
fiery rains
and purplish-orange skies.
 
The sheen of the blades,
the green of the blades,
the warmth
of some crepuscular caresses,
the cold and the silence
between the four walls,
the stark memories
of a beloved
during the final, fading heartbeats,
the beauty and the chaos
within us-
forged in the furnaces
of distant stars.

an argument against being human

We don't just exist.
We want to be a part of the knowing, deep knowing,
the dread, the Lovecraftian dread,
We want to be a part of the pleasure, the race, the rush,
We want to be a part of the love, the drudgery, the pining,
We want to be attached, to connect, to despair,
We all want a spot under the sun, a place under the sky,
a sliver of the moon, or the full moon.
 
We don't just exist
like the pure delight of a swallow's flight
on a crisp spring afternoon,
or the breeze that carries her.
We don’t just exist
like the cares of an ant
which loiters on a dropped ice-cream cone
on the edge of a busy pavement.

We go deeper!
We lie to ourselves,
‘it can’t be that simple’,
we thrust ourselves
into the deepest layers of hell,
where we incubate
in carcasses of rotten prejudices, ideals, and beliefs,
while the modest brains
of birds, beasts, and bees,
deliver to them a freedom
within the two-dimensional world of survival. 

(the ant allegory lifted from ‘Better Call Saul – Season 5)

Obsession

How I stare at you, into you,
how I mute the voices,
within and around,
blur the background,
and become hyper aware
of your presence.

How you look at me, just casually,
I stumble awkwardly,
I fumble,
how you finish my lines,
and how you complete me.

How the smell of your body lingers
in every corner of the room
long after you are gone,
how I feed my fixation
and become breathless. 

Daydreaming

Walking in and out of countless doors,
the profundity and beauty
of life and existence wrap around me
and hit me hard.
I become self-aware of the magnitude of things
and the smallness of things.
The light from the skies dances on
every mote of dust
and every atom of being.  
The shimmer blinds my eyes
as I drive myself over the edge.
 
(an ode to Radiohead’s masterpiece)

Of Broken Wings

The old man
held the delicate broken wing,
the bird whimpered.
 
Like an expert
he stroked the bird gently,
wrapped the wing in cloth,
securing it calmly with tape.
For the next two weeks,
he fed the bird
and nursed it back
to its glory in the skies.
 
Sometimes, on late afternoons,
the bird would visit the old man
in his little prison cell,
chirping noisily and hopping around
on the windowsill -
delivering a performance of its lifetime.
 
At other times,
it would bring small tokens as offerings:
beads, buttons,
twigs, pebbles,
berries, seeds,
pen caps, key chains
and other curious objects
that warmed his heart.

One Sunday
immediately after the new year,
the bird
delivered a sharp piece of broken glass.
The blinding light
reflecting off the piercing edges
stabbed into his heart,
carving out a capsule of guilt
buried deep within:
the torment, the rage, the terror,
and a broken beer bottle,
three slashed bodies in a bloody pool
three tattered souls laid bare in time’s ridicule.
 
It's a late autumn afternoon,
and the bird
hadn’t visited in three months.
As a feather
danced delicately in the chilly air,
his trembling fingers
traced its descent
and his labored breath
was weighed down
by the trials, tribulations,
and temptations
of a past life.
 
His empty eyes
gazed
at the tiny objects in the room,
his weary mind
pondered
if redemption is truly possible.